The Sky Sports tagline for this Ashes series is "Stay up or catch up". Of course, this isn't really an option at all. From the first brilliantly luminous shots of Mike Atherton and Shane Warne wandering the Gabba perimeter, it was clear that a more appropriate slogan for Sky's live coverage would have been something like "Start watching, get sucked in, say 'just to the end of this over' ... Hmmm they're bringing on the spinner, and finally wake up on the sofa dreaming fitfully about the ecstasy-racked features of Peter Siddle".

In the end the first day of the Ashes was an irresistibly more-ish piece of television, with those familiarly zingy Australian colours and a lovely furred quality to the satellite images that seemed to turn everything in Brisbane a shade of baggy green. It was also one of those occasions when the customary mob-handed hyperbole of Sky's production lands upon an event entirely worthy of the occasion. There is no point in fighting it. No sleep until Sydney: from here on in we're all Ashes vampires.

In the Sky studio there was a sense of palpable opening-night tension around the bloodshot-yellow coffee table, with even the unflappable David Gower looking a little blotched with early tour nerves as we cut to the seasoned Lancashire alliance of Atherton and David Lloyd to take us through the opening overs. "Strauss has been in excellent form so far," Atherton noted before the first ball, providing a jarringly uncharacteristic note of perky optimism. "All that preparation. Months and months Strauss will have been playing those first deliveries in his mind," he rasped three balls later, gleefully relishing the pungent ironies of the moment.

It was all reassuringly familiar viewing, with a fairly seamless join between host broadcaster and Sky's own polish. The graphics were slick, although the image that introduces the adverts appears to represent the entire Australian landmass consumed with apocalyptic nuclear fire, which is perhaps a little insensitive. Channel 9 has also provided something called "Virtual Eye", which is almost indistinguishable from Hawk-Eye, but sounds like an unconvincing supermarket own brand knock-off, like corned breakfast flakes or Gola Cola. And there is a welcomeprominence for the Hotspot thermal imaging camera, a marvellous thing that makes you want to watch the rest of your life through the unforgiving filter of its hidden nicks and dreamy sweet spots.

Even a passage of play that might have dragged – Alastair Cook batting in a style reminiscent of an arthritic housemaid thrashing at the scullery mice with a yard broom – remained absorbing, with Bumble free to muse on Mitchell Johnson's floral tattoos ("I'm thinking back – Fred Trueman and an azalea"). There were also the first mutterings about Jonathan's Trott's time-consuming "rituals" at the crease, although the thought did occur that Sky could probably sneak in an extra break during Trott's pre-delivery scratching-about time, maybe something suitably sponsored, like an advert for a leading brand of fungal itch relief-cream.

As the night began to stretch out, it was time to sink into a familiar duvet of genially harrumphing Botham. Sir Ian remains unimpeachably himself, but it is perhaps time to acknowledge that he doesn't actually provide much analysis, producing instead a set of rolling Botham sound-effects which increasingly bring to mind the grunts and shrugs of another Sky mainstay, the equally beefy Homer Simpson.

The introduction of the left-arm spinner Xavier Doherty to bowl at Kevin Pietersen was gleefully teed up by Lloyd ("They've done him, left-armers! They've done him for a pastime!"). It brought the first shouts through the stump mic of "Well bowled X!", a useful catch-all line for a team with an rotating door policy on spinners, and only a short step from the first cries of "well bowled insert name here!" In the afternoon Doherty was cajoled with cries of "Well bowled Doh!", although the thought occurred that this might simply have been Botham/Homer calling out from the back of the box.

Of course the day would ultimately belong to Siddle, who in full flight is a wonderful televisual spectacle, and a bowler with the grizzled and cragged complexion of a vinegar-soaked conker. His triple-wicket maiden was overseen by Gower, making for perhaps the most debonair and understated hat-trick in the history of men shouting on TV. But Sky had their big moment now and breakfast viewers were treated to repeat super slow-mo dissections of the Siddle celebration roars, reminiscent in close up of a particularly fearsome special-effect dinosaur in a late-1970s fantasy film. It is a sight, as the nights roll on, we might just have to get a little more used to.